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| X-Men (1992) – Storm |
Why doesn’t the 1990s Storm have an African accent? Halle Berry has played the live action Storm in four of the X-Men movies and did an amazing job. Storm’s been recast and will be played by Alexandra Shipp in the upcoming Marvel movie X-Men: Apocalypse.
Storm’s supposed to be from Kenya and one of the most frequent
complaints about Storm’s appearance in the X-Men movies is her
non-existent African accent.
Storm’s the first black female in mainstream comics and is a mutant who
has the ability to summon and control the weather. Back in the 1990s,
the X-Men animated series
featured Storm and everyone loves her. She was our first real taste of
what Storm would be like brought to life. Interestingly, we barely
notice that she doesn’t have an African accent either.
In season two of
the series, actress Alison Sealy-Smith took over as the voice of Storm from Iona Morris
and in an interview explained why she didn’t use an African accent
either. Alison Sealy-Smith is a multiple award-winning Canadian
actress, born and raised in Barbados.
In an interview for Anime Kon 2012 she
explained that the producers told her to use a North African accent, but
instead went for a Shakespearean tone. She said “nobody went for
authenticity at that point.” After hearing Morris’ audition, she
realized “the lady don’t sound North African at all.”
“I realized they
don’t want North African.” Sealy-Smith said. “They want something that
doesn’t sound completely twangy and American. That’s all they knew that
they wanted. They could talk about North Africa all they wanted. So, I
made the best decision because what I did was I went in there and I
happened to do this kind of voice that came straight off of doing
Shakespeare.”
The clip is wonderful, but you can skip to her section on Storm at 7:30.
She also gets into what it’s like as a working voice actor and how to
get into the business.
Here’s a video of Storm’s monologues in the show for a comparison of how awesome her voice is
Do you miss the North African accent? How do you feel about Storm? If you saw the show who was your favorite character?
You Might Also Like
- 10 Cool Facts You Never Knew About Marvel’s Storm
- You Won’t Believe This 90s X-MEN Cartoon Theme Played on a Piano
- 9 Facts About Alexandra Shipp, the New Storm in X-MEN: APOCALYPSE
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<span class="dsq-postid" data-dsqidentifier="33662 ">8 Comments
Because I've never watched the old cartoons and only the new X-men movies, I didn't know about about the accent. Cool.
She did have a strong voice in the cartoon. I've never watched it either.
I had forgotten it has been too long.
Yikes. I need to watch those again. Didn't notice when I was a kid…
It has a very commanding presence Alex and sounds perfect to me.
Her origin isn't really talked about in the movies Clarissa, so hopefully that'll change soon.
It had been a while for me too David, but it all came back to me.
I would like to point out that Storm is NOT, from Kenya she is actually from Cairo, Egypt Kenya is just where she was when Professor X found her. This is how she was depicted in the 90's cartoon that i remember.